


Golden Year

by quicksparrows



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Slow Burn, Threesome - F/M/M, workplace relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 10:19:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9435842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: Dr. Angela Ziegler has been on the periphery of Overwatch for years, and has generally enjoyed an easy relationship with the soldiers and peacekeepers who share the United Nations' Zurich headquarters. Upon her promotion, however, she discovers she isn't the only one in the middle of a transition: Overwatch is going from military operation to peacekeeping organization, power is starting to shift between Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes, and leisure time is easier to come by than ever.Their golden year has begun.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I can't stop writing these fools.
> 
> While a lot of the ideas in this spun out of Warning Signs, it's not an ironclad prequel. You can come into this with the same premise, though; Gabriel and Jack extended the invitation to join Overwatch to Angela and she accepted. Warning Signs' prologue (and to some extent, epilogue) can essentially serve as a prologue to this one, too, if you're feeling peckish for a bit more backstory, but it's not required reading. I didn't feel like rehashing it here.
> 
> For this one, I want to play with slow burn by pacing the story over a year, with each chapter representing a month. I also want to try my hand at a Jack Morrison who wants to take glory in his bare hands, a Gabriel Reyes who worked hard to be the man he is and so will not change for anyone, and an Angela Ziegler who will thoughtlessly put herself anywhere she thinks she can make a difference, even to her own detriment. I also want to write some messy workplace relationships amongst characters –– the perils of living, eating, sleeping, fighting and breathing with the same group of people, day in and day out. And oh, plenty of sex, because why not? Threesomes, even. The more the merrier. On top of that, no ironclad pairings, and no love triangles. (Because fuck 'em, that's why. They're all adults here.)
> 
> Also, a shout out to HeavyHearts, who has entertained me for literal days with long-ass conversations about this insane three-way pairing, and also cajoled me into getting this damn thing done. 
> 
> As per usual, you can find me on [Tumblr](http://quicksparrows.tumblr.com), too.

 

**Late April**

 

 

Angela's back is sore.

One gets peculiar cramps, working in a laboratory. No matter how ergonomic the worktables are intended by design, the user is ever-changing. The very nature of human movement ensures that there's a constant shift between standing and perched on a stool, or between working on something close or reaching across the expanse of the table. After all these years in the research lab, she even notices something as small as the lift of her shoes; though she would normally be wearing some surgeron's clogs or non-slip running shoes, today she's wearing heels, and it's throwing everything off-kilter.

Off-kilter means rushing, which is particularly bad when she has a thousand things to do. That alone isn't particularly unusual, as she always has a thousand things to do, but any other day, she could just work well into the evening. Today, there's a deadline. Today the clock looms overhead, counting down the hours to noon.

She looks up at that clock periodically. This particular time she looks up, she sees only the tooth of frosted glass and a perilously large metal edge cutting into her vision. Startled, she reaches up and pushes her microscope goggles out of the way, dialing her out of a view twelve-hundred times the scope of an unassisted human eye. Back on the clock. 

11:29 AM. 

There isn't enough time in the day.

This is exactly why she's wearing her heels in the lab –– she foolishly thought she could get more done if she didn't stop to change _shoes_ , knowing she'd just have to change back to get out the door. It seems that

She'll be fortunate if she's finished an hour from now, and by then she'll be late.

"Dr. Ziegler?"

Her administrative assistant has poked her head in the door; she's a robust woman with round cheeks, and she looks very much like a mouse when she pops her head in like that. 

"Yes, Talia?"

"You asked me to warn you when it's half past," Talia says.

"I don't think I'll be done in time, I'm afraid," Angela says, absently. "Can you tell him I'm running late?"

Angela pushes the microscope goggles back down over her eyes and fixes her vision on her petri dish again; under applied yellow light, little cells wiggle and dance nervously across the glass, and then multiply. Twofold. Fourfold. Sixfold. Though the thought of being late makes her want to wiggle and dance, too, she can't just abandon the test without losing her morning's work.

"Of course, I'll tell him," Talia says, though she sounds very much like she doesn't want to. She'll do it anyway, but those little seeds of concern propagate quickly, even as she lingers by the door. "I'll get out of your way, I don't want to disrupt you…"

"What do you think of him, Talia?" Angela asks.

"Who? Sorry?"

Angela chuckles under her breath.

"Oh," Talia supplies, slowly. "I guess he's very strict. He always sounds like he's in a bad mood. Last time I told him you were busy, he got cross with me."

Not surprising, though obviously not endearing either, in Angela's eyes. She worries her lower lip on her teeth, attention still fixed on the cells. They're cheek cells –– her own, actually –– and dialed in closer they have topographies like snowy continents, vast and grey until the golden light washes over them. Each cell wears a halo, encompassing its organelles until it prompts itself to cleave in two. Replication, a rapid regeneration.

"He's got a short temper," Angela says, idly. "But he's a good man. Do you know how I know that?"

"How?"

"Because he listens to medical practitioners when they give him advice," Angela says, amused. "That's exceptionally rare amongst the military brass."

"Huh," Talia says, a little dry. "Is he usually very punctual, too?"

As if he would give them even a moment to breathe, knowing the consequence he would be late as well! But Angela turns her attention back to her continents on their dark field, her hundreds of little nations of _Angela Ziegler._ Before her eyes they start to swell instead of replicate, becoming less continents and more celestial bodies, amorphous and mysterious. She watches them quiver a second longer, and then they begin to rupture. Their organelles scattered on fluid, coasting as the cells collapse. 

Apoptosis, in one of its more uncommon forms. There goes the edge of the universe.

She mourns each one as they go. A failed test, she thinks, but certainly not a wasted morning.

She shoves the microscope goggles up on her forehead again, removing herself from a world of overhealed cells. The goggles shove her bangs up out of her face; she'd tried to style them this morning to look nice for the inevitable meetings, but all of that was wasted on a morning draped over a lab bench.

She looks to Talia.

"Is he punctual?" Talia repeats, helpfully.

"Usually," Angela says. "Don't fret too much. If I run too late, he'll come find me."

Hmm.

"Wouldn't it be bad to be late on your first day with Overwatch?"

Angela laughs at that, short and genuine.

"Technically, he's not my boss until noon!" she says.

Still, she ought to get going.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Angela breezes out of the lab at 12:15, her spring coat over one arm and her umbrella in the same hand, and a messenger bag worth of personal items she hadn't wanted to leave behind in her lab –– her _former_ lab, she reminds herself –– during the transition. Her heart feels light; all the goodbyes had been said days prior, and her staff had held a party for her last weekend.

"Everyone who gets a promotion to Overwatch drops off the face of the earth," a colleague had confided in her over a fourth glass of wine. "But I'm hoping I can get on the team someday, too, so maybe we'll work together again!"

But those jokes aside, it wasn't a serious goodbye, really. She's worked in this building for a number of years, and she had an internship here when she was in her early twenties, before Overwatch was even a dream in the heads of desperate people. Moving to the renovated upper floors of the UN Headquarters is a just small jump to a different floor with a different lab with some different staff.

It's not all that big of a change, really. She's not going to _let_ it be all that different.

Still –– she's running late.

The elevator door opens and Angela moves to step out, but her way is blocked. The Commander himself stands fixed in the doorway, as if he had anticipated that she would be coming on this particular elevator, and not loomed perilously in every doorway for the past five minutes. Perhaps he startled dozens of people before getting the right elevator. 

He looks down his nose at her, his mouth fixed in a scowl. Angela leans forward in the doorway, but he doesn't move to let her out. No matter! She isn't intimidated by him the least, so she smiles up at him.

"Commander Reyes," Angela says, warmly. 

She figures he'd like the formality and reverence of a title over _Gabriel_ , or especially _Gabe_. His expression remains hard regardless. His jaw remains set, however, and he looks down at her as if she were an errant rookie soldier of his. She supposes she is now, at least in some military-adjacent support role. Jack had warned her that he was ruthless on the clock –– a real military guy, a bondafide leader, and proud of it.

But it's still _funny_ from a man she's seen drunk and having tantrums over poor bar service. 

"You're late, Doc," he says, voice dropping. He looms over her.

The elevator protests at lingering too long on the floor, and he puts a hand out to block it from closing. The mechanism inside the door thumps, fighting him, but it could never win against his superior strength. _Door blocked,_ hums the elevator console. 

Commander Reyes continues: "Let me guess. You were buried in work?"

"Naturally," she supplies.

"Of _course_." 

But he sighs, the slighest bit relenting. 

"Have you had lunch?"

"Not yet."

"Well, I'll show you around, and then we'll have lunch," he says. He rolls his shoulders –– a little stress tic, she's observed –– and he gestures for her to step back into the elevator. "In."

She moves back in. He follows and some people waiting in the queue outside try to do the same, but he turns to _look_ at them. She doesn't see his expression, but she can imagine it once she sees the alarm pass over the poor UN employees' faces. They hover in the doorway for a moment and then step back.

The door closes; the elevator console thanks them. Reyes makes a satisfied noise, low in his throat. Angela laughs to herself; he doesn't partake. She watches him fish out his ID card and wave it in front of the elevator's scanner; five additional floors appear as options on the touch screen, and he selects the first one. It's new territory: she'll now have access to the restricted floors previously reserved for Overwatch personnel. 

"I hear they've had you doing paperwork for weeks," he remarks instead. "All finalized? No cold feet, no second thoughts?"

(He knows she's spent many nights pacing her lab, wondering if she could truly leave it. He also knows she still grapples with the idea that she, Dr. Angela Ziegler, will work for a militaristic organization like Overwatch. She's afraid for her principles, and he knows that, too. Of course he knows.)

"It's all finalized," she replies. "I've just been waiting for you to come make it official."

"That makes it sound like I'm here to deflower you," he says. 

He smiles broadly, flashing all his upper teeth. He stands with such ease, arms folded across his chest, his massive bicepsl leve with her head.

"Ha ha," she says, as flatly as she can muster while still smiling, but that wolfish look is slow to fade. "Do all new recruits get a personal tour from the Commander?"

"No," he says. And then, as he turns to face the door again: "You're just that special."

Angela imagines she is too old to feel tickled by that notion, but she's tickled anyway. She just chuckles under her breath.

"I'm flattered," she says. "I might have gotten lost without you!"

"You're a big girl," he says, looking up at the floor indicator. "I'm sure you could've handled it."

She's not sure whether to feel patronized or humoured –– maybe both. He looks back at her with kind eyes, though, and she settles for humor. He's the Commander. He gives everyone a hard time.

The door slides open. Angela follows Commander Reyes out, into the expansive lobby for the Overwatch floors. His broad back hides the full view, denying her a moment where she might have looked upon the grand white marble lobby all at once and thought _this is it. Overwatch, what a thing of beauty!_ Instead, she sees the line of his shoulders, the bright lights on the high ceiling, and a scarce third of the black and orange emblem. By time Reyes shifts out of her sight, walking deeper into the lobby, the moment has passed.

"Lobby," he says, disinterested. "Have you been in here before?"

"Never," she says. She slows but he doesn't. "Not even for the paperwork."

"Yeah, Overwatch likes its secrecy," he says, dryly. He realizes she isn't following and he pauses to indulge her.

Angela looks up at the Overwatch logo. It is a truncated version of the logo designed for nuclear disarmament almost a century ago, but since the end of the Omnic War and the rise of Overwatch, people have ceased to make the comparison. Overwatch has proven itself, and so it stands alone –– in this case, six feet high and embedded in the glossy marble, illuminated by flood lights.

"It's beautiful," she says.

Reyes follows her gaze up.

"I hate it, personally," he says. "It looks better in white."

"I thought black was your colour," she says.

He scoffs.

"The black version doesn't show up on my clothes," he says.

She chuckles behind a hand. "It's––"

"Angela!" Jack interjects. 

Angela has barely turned her head when Jack ploughs into her space, right into a boisterous hug she disappears almost entirely into. Her arms end up under his cracked brown bomber jacket, and he's sweaty underneath it, his t-shirt clinging to his skin. She would cringe if she weren't delighted to see him. It's been a handful of weeks since they last caught up.

"Jack Morrison!" Angela says against his neck, and when he holds her back at arm's length, she gives into the urge to scold him further: "You need to shower! You're all sticky."

"Morrison," Reyes deadpans. "This is a _new recruit_." Unspoken: _Don't act like we're at the bar, asshole._

Jack lets her go, but not without a swift kiss on each of her cheeks. Very European of him, the consummate American.

"I missed her!" he says to Reyes, unapologetic. He turns his eyes back to her and smiles, as genial as can be. "Welcome on-board. Maybe we'll get you out of that lab more often."

"Just maybe!" she says. Truth be told, her new Overwatch lab is the thing she's looking forward to most, even more than seeing these two a little more often. She folds her arms and smiles. "I'll have you know I'm not very fond of flying, so don't expect to dragme all over the world with you."

"You're _dreaming_ ," Reyes says. "You can do a lot of your research in the field, once you've got basic combat training."

"I suspect I'll fail many of those classes," she says. She is not a combat medic and has no intention of being one, and there are many more adept than her at that particular job, but it's fun to tease. "But if you manage to pry me from my research, gentlemen, I do relish getting to oversee the care of members of Overwatch."

"Point," Jack says. He glances to Reyes, mischief alight on his eyes. "I told you she joined just to get a look at our medical records."

"Stop!" she laughs.

"Yeah, _stop_ ," Reyes says, coolly. "Seriously. I'm going to give her the tour, Morrison, while you fuck off somewhere. I don't have time for this."

Jack is utterly unphased. The comment rolls off his shoulders and he gives Reyes a curt little nod and a wide smile; Jack even seems to be a little pleased to have riled him. Reyes sighs but doesn't seem perturbed, either. It's funny, seeing them here, ostensibly at work. It's the same as when they're getting drinks or dinner, or dancing, but with a few more feet of space between them.

"Before I fuck off, we've got an update on the Toronto situation," Jack says. "We might have to go. It doesn't look like they're going to get through the wall."

Angela doesn't know what that means, so she looks to Commander Reyes. He's frowning heavily, but he's not surprised at all. Angela and Jack both watch him idly scratch at his beard with his thumb while he thinks. He shakes his head finally.

"Who do we need, if we go? You, me, Ana, Reinhardt? Could really use Gérard, but he's in Incheon. I want the Canadians, too. They can give us the lay of the land."

"Torbjörn is in Sweden, the wife just had another kid," Jack says. "Liao's back in China."

"I remember," Reyes says. "But we're moving in assault, we don't need them much anyway. Could do without Ana, too."

"No, bring Ana," Jack says. "I want her watching my back."

Angela watches Reyes's brows knit a little, but she's not sure that Jack notices; he looks to Angela instead, and in his gaze she feels a question: _Are you coming?_  

But he doesn't ask.

"Okay, fine. Bring Ana," Reyes confirms. "That should be enough, then. Alert them all and put them on standby."

"Sure," Jack says.

"What's this about?" Angela asks. She figures she might as well; it's officially her business, as of today.

"There's a navigation tech company in Toronto, Canada that makes self-driving cars," Jack supplies. "Something went wrong with the programming somewhere down the line and now the building is holding the employees hostage."

"An omnium?"

"Sort of," Commander Reyes says. He sighs, long and heavy. "It was decommissioned a long time ago, but some loophole in Canadian law meant that instead of being torn down, the building was purchased by a start-up and converted into a factory. Stupidest idea I've ever heard of, building machines in a former omnium –– but they're paying for it now. And we're going to pay for it, too; taking on omnics is a lot more dangerous than taking on people."

Angela can't say she disagrees, but only one comment comes to mind: "So these omnics are… _cars?_ "

Jack shrugs, unpeturbed by the thought. _Maybe they are, maybe they aren't._

"Something like that," he says. His eyes flick down to the communicator in his hand, and he gives a little _ha_ under his breath and then pockets it. He reaches to touch her elbow, his fingertips ghosting up her forearm from there, and he adds: "Anyway. It's good to finally have you, Angela. If we don't deploy, then we should have dinner tonight."

"I'd like that," she says. She looks to Reyes, who shrugs.

"Sounds good," he says.

"Great. My treat –– or Gabriel's," Jack says. "He's been looking forward to today for a while now. Wouldn't shut up about it, actually."

Angela laughs, somewhere between being charmed and incredulous, and Reyes looks to Jack with an utterly deadpan look. Reyes is many things –– many more than she even knows yet, she imagines –– and yet _pining_ doesn't seem to be in his repetoire. Maybe that's why it's funny.

"Is that so," she says, and she looks up at Gabriel, pondering. "Have you really?"

"He has," Jack confirms.

"Gang up on me, why don't you?" Gabriel says.

But Gabriel gives up seriousness for a second to smirk a little, and Angela can see memories of their usual romps around Zurich drift behind his eyes. They'd broken in their new home by baying after a real Swisswoman to show them around the city. If there weren't clearance checks at the entrance of her lab, she's sure she would have had these boys breathing down her neck during _surgery_ for drinks and dinner and dancing, _every_ single night they weren't raining gunfire down on their enemies.

"Well, I'm glad for such a warm welcome," she says.

"We've got to butter you up now so you don't hate us when you get thrown on the training mats," Jack says.

"You're funny," she says.

The curve of his mouth says he's perfectly aware of that. 

Jack turns his eyes to Commander Reyes, and the two of them share a fleeting smirk. Jack reaches out to clap Reyes on the shoulder, and he says: "You show her around. I'll get back to work." 

"For once in your goddamn life," Reyes replies, but there's no bite to it, not in the slightest.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Overwatch has its own private elevator bank. When she sidles in beside Reyes, she notices there's no directory on the screen like the rest of the building; it just has the Overwatch logo on the screen instead, and the voice on the comm is different when it invites them in to choose a floor. It has a huskier feminine voice than the one downstairs.

"She's a prototype for one big linked system," Reyes says. "Annoying but better than when she was first installed. She used to be way more personal."

"Not a fan?" Angela asks.

He shakes his head curtly, but says nothing. He hits the button for the next floor.

"What floor is my lab on?" she asks, conversationally.

"We'll get there," Reyes replies.

Angela anticipates her new lab more than anything, and she's not sure what she'll do with a whole week leading up to it being put fully online. She hopes she'll get a peek today, at the very least.

The elevator has glass panels, and she watches the central lobby slide down and out of sight. They move past a spiraling glass stairway, the glass so clear that it is almost disorienting to look at, let alone walk. The elevator chimes and the door slides open, and she follows Reyes out, eyes wide and curious.

"The first floor is offices and meeting rooms," he says, and sure enough, they are laid out one after another. "End of hall has a theater, for bigger meetings." He waves his hand in its general direction, somewhat unhelpfully — maybe he's never given a tour before?

"Offices for Amari, Liao, Frederick, Puma, To," he adds, gesturing at some and tapping on the door with his knuckles as they go, even though there are name plaques. "You probably won't have much to do on this floor, but you might as well know where everything is."

"Of course," she says. "Does Overwatch do a regular town hall?"

"Usually," he says. "And every other week, the screens come down and we have a conference with the folks in Nairobi, Geneva, New York and Vienna. Mandatory attendance, by the way. No exceptions."

She nods.

"That's fine. I run my own department like that."

"Good," he says. 

He gestures at his door as they pass it.

"This is me. I have the biggest desk, but I'm never here if I can help it," he says. "But you have my comm link, so if you ever need me, that's the best bet. Come on. Stairs."

They loop around the floor back to the central hub, and he jogs up the stairs ahead of her. Her heels are loud on the glass steps, particularly when she doubles her steps to catch up with him. He glances back.

"You always wear heels around the lab?" he asks, with a little gesture at them.

"Not often," she says. "But I thought I'd make a good impression."

"You could have showed up in bunny slippers and I wouldn't've cared," he says.

"Well, _you_ wouldn't," she says, pointedly, to the man who seems to wear hooded sweatshirts day in and day out despite being one of the world's most decorated soldiers, and one of the most reknowned in history, at that.

Reyes waves her off dismissively, and he drags her through the next few floors:

The second floor is operations, and the war room. Torbjörn's lab is here, too, and it takes up most of the floor. Reyes lists off some names of engineers, but promptly promises her she won't see them much; they're an insular group. Reyes shows her the door to the weapon development facility anyway. Torbjörn Lindholm not being there is a mild relief; Angela has met him on numerous occasions before, and though their conversations have never been long, they have always been marked by a mutual reluctance. She hopes they can warm to each other now that they'll be proper colleagues instead of just contemporaries.

The third floor is the clinic, and her eventual labs. They're still in the process of setting up. Almost all of her work and facilities upstairs will be moved here, along with many members of her team, who are now all Overwatch by proxy. Reyes lets her wander around the unfinished part of the floor a bit, after she sees the clinic. She moves ahead of him to pace the place, counting workstations, noting machinery and diagnostic tools. Everything is brand new — much of it is still in packaging, and there are technicians zigzagging about between tasks. She intends to oversee some of the set up over the next week, but everything looks to be in good hands.

"Happy?" Reyes asks her, as they leave.

She'd feel silly being moony about it in front of him, so she just smiles and nods. _Very much so._

The fourth floor is gymnasiums and training and a library, as well as a private cafeteria. Leisure for the people who live here –– Angela doesn't know much about leisure, if she's being honest. Reyes laughs when she jokes about it.

The fifth floor is dorms. Angela walks onto the floor to find it not that different from her old university dorms. The halls fork off in three directions from the elevators – rooms on either side, a common area going straight out. There's an old-fashioned whiteboard of team events on the wall nearby, and though it is rather sparsely updated, someone's written in large letters: _This is a WORK-FREE zone!!!!_

Angela chuckles.

"Has there been conflict over that?"

"Growing pains," Gabriel says, sagely. "Some people are trying to make it more home-y, but there's not a lot of time, and someone's always crabby about something. Taking in lots of non-military people these days, they're just not used to the protocols, and my people are going a little batshit with new freedom."

He sighs.

"Did you get an assignment yet?" he asks.

Angela looks at him, momentarily confused, and then she laughs.

"I'm not moving in," she says.

"You turned down board?" he asks, a little surprised. 

"Yes," she says. "Why wouldn't I? I live in Zurich. You know that."

"Well, that's fine, but you're going to miss out on a lot of shit," he says. "The dorms are half the fun."

She wonders what the other half is, but she has a little feeling about it, so she doesn't ask. She shrugs at him instead.

"A good degree of separation from work is healthy," she says. "I'd never relax at all if I knew my lab was just a floor or two away."

"Right," he says, but he sounds a little put-out about it anyway. "I eat, sleep and breathe this place."

She can tell, but she doesn't say so. Bulky muscle and superhuman strength aside, Gabriel Reyes is still aging. Stress and a rigorous lifestyle have made him look a number of years _older_ than his age, even, which Angela has guessed to be his late thirties. He wears it well, at the very least. He will likely still be handsome into his fifties, which is more than most men can say.

He scoffs a little and shrugs his shoulders, like he doesn't care. _Stubborn._

"You can always change your mind later," he says.

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Hmm."

(She wonders if he's ever really lived alone. Did he go to post-secondary at all and live in the dorms? Or was it military barracks from age eighteen? Has he ever had a space of his own, a place to return to after gallivanting around the planet? How lonely, she thinks.)

"I'll visit often," she teases, as if they won't be seeing each other near daily.

"You'd better," he says. Lower: "That's an order."

"Is it?" she replies, amused. A twitch of a smile flickers over the corner of his mouth. "Well, show me where your room is, so I know where to go."

He chuckles at her and starts down the left hall. He points out names at doors again, sometimes pausing to remember who is where, as if she will possibly remember where dozens of people are at any given time, but she remembers Amari next to Harrison next to Morrison. ("Very confusing when you're drunk," Gabriel comments.) Everyone else she'd know is in the other hall, he says. 

His room is at the very end of the hall, and he opens the door with his ID and stands back so she can step in. She's not sure what to expect from his room, but it is dark but clean. He closes the door behind them while she surveys the room, and then he puts a hand to her ribs and pushes her gently up against the wall. She moves like nothing, feather-light under his palm, and she looks up with him. Her tongue drifts over the backs of her front teeth, a little bit anticipation, a little bit apprehension.

He kisses her. 

For a hot second she relishes the pull of his lips, and then she turns her face away and he backs off _just_ enough that she can breathe.

"We're coworkers now," she says, gently.

"I know," he says. "Didn't you see the whiteboard? It's a work-free zone."

She smiles.

"I did."

"So?"

"So…"

Angela snorts and gets a finger in his belt, pulling him flush with her again.

 _Technicalities_.

She goes to lunch with him after, even if she's already quite satisfied.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Leaving the cafeteria, Reyes tells her they have another stop. They go back down to the second floor to stop by a weapons locker.

"Why?" Angela asks.

"Shooting range," he says, beckoning her to follow. 

"Really?" she says. "It's my first day."

"So what?" he replies.

She sighs and follows.

After the Omnic War, she'd hoped the world's love affair with guns would dry up, toxified by legions of Bastion units, but no such luck. The military had just phased out traditional projectile weaponry and replaced it with pulse technology. Angela hasn't handled those wounds much yet, but she imagines she will now.

After all, the first in Overwatch might be friendly fire. It kills people all the time.

Now, shadowing Reyes into the shooting range, she feels she could become one of them. Or worse, she'll be the one behind the gun.

His strides are long and confident, as they always are, but on the shooting range he seems even more at home. They walk down the long aisle of divided compartments, each looking down a long alley to a target. Each shooter is obscured from another's sight, as if gunmen are racehorses afraid of their own bearings. Every time they pass a compartment in use, the occupant glances back, barely perceptible behind shooting goggles. A couple lift the pads of their headphones, murmur an acknowledgement: _Commander. Commander. Commander._ Some smile, some more politely than others. All of them raise their right hands in salute.

Some of them give Angela a short glance. Barely a flicker, as though she were a ghost trailing after their Commander's heels. The soldiers of Overwatch know who is or isn't their kind.

Finally, Commander Reyes takes them into an empty compartment. He slaps the table dividing them from the length of the range. _Come here._ Angela follows, but she's not sure why they're here. It's made her jittery already.

"They usually assign you a personal sidearm when you pass your training," he says. "But I'm giving you this now on the promise that you keep it locked up until then, unless Morrison or Amari or I are with you. They'd be glad to teach you, too, you know."

It seems everyone wants to put a gun in her hands. Gabriel and Jack have both been hinting about it for the past six months, pending her transition to Overwatch; maybe it's the novelty of a healer with a gun, or maybe it's just them relishing getting to teach someone new. Deflowered again, is it? 

Angela shouldn't feel surprised, even as he places a white plastic case on the table between them. She feels an immediate distaste for it, like blood in her mouth, heavy and metallic. She's had months to prepare for the thought that she'd be a member of combat personnel, and yet the apperance of the case is as startling as if she'd never considered it at all.

"Ah," she says. "I promise."

It'll be an easy one to keep. She's not sure that she'll ever be ready, and that's fine.

"I got this made special, just for you."

She hopes inwardly that it's special because it shoots out painkillers and bloodclotters, or maybe it's just a joke and it's actually a surgical stapler inside. _See?_ he could say. _You're nervous. Second thoughts, right?_  

He pushes it closer to her, urging her to open it, so she does tentatively. She stares down at the pistol inside. Its sleek white sides gleam under the harsh overhead lighting; it is a short blocky thing, almost toylike in design if not scale. She'd almost prefer if it were black and menacing, as it feels foolish to be wary of something so unobtrusive. She keeps her fingertips poised on the lid, not even touching the egg-crate foam lining.

Reyes snorts under his breath and she looks up to find his expression a little wry.

"It's not going to bite you," he says.

"I'm not worried about that," she says, pointedly. She doesn't want to be chastened for what she doesn't agree with. "I don't use guns."

"Well, today is a lot of firsts, then," he says, a little impatiently. "It's a pulse blaster. No bullets. It's not even a proper pistol. That's better, right? Just pick it up. Fingers off the trigger."

Angela gives him such a look of plain exasperation. His mouth is set in a smug smile, and for that alone she knows she isn't going to win. She picks it up under his watchful gaze. The gun fits neatly in her hands, the grip the exact width of her fingers; she wonders how he might have known how large.

"I guessed based on how your hand compared to mine," he says. A mind reader, apparently. He puts his hand over hers in gesture; the broadness of his hand easily covers her own, as if she were merely an extension of the grip. He prods her fingers into proper position. "Looks like I got it right."

"You could have asked," she says.

"Then it wouldn't have been a surprise," he says.

She didn't exactly want a gun, much less a pretty-looking personalized one, but she was never going to be able to avoid it.

"Thank you, Commander," she says. 

"You're welcome," he says, and he sidles up close to her to direct her to aim down the alley. She eases into his direction, swallowing her breath.

"How long have you been relishing the thought of teaching me to shoot?"

"Since the first time I ever met you, the moment you said you'd sooner go into pediatric oncology than put soldiers back together," he says. He takes a little pride in maybe being personally responsible for that. "You didn't like soldiers at all. Didn't want to be near 'em, didn't want to talk to them, didn't want to work with them."

Funny how things change.

Commander Reyes slides a hand under her arm and nudges so that she can try aimimg, and she moves herself right away. Better do it herself than be a puppet, and they're in the range. There's no danger, really, even if the principle alone bothers her. She swallows, dry, even though the gun isn't loaded, even though her finger doesn't move even a milimetre closer to the trigger.

"Any second thoughts on that?" he asks.

She shakes her head.

"I like people who happen to be soldiers, Gabriel," she says. "I just don't want to shoot things."

"What, you wouldn't shoot Omnics?"

Angela hesitates.

"I just don't want to shoot a person."

"You don't have to," he says. "Someone comes after you, you can just lay down and die."

She lowers the blaster and looks at him with knitted brows. He shrugs her off handily, though he stays where he is, crowding her against the shooting table. His hands slide down her waist instead –– a very personal move, considering he'd sniped at Jack for the same earlier.

"I'm not going to lay down and die," she says, pointedly. "What would be the benefit in that?"

_You'd keep your principles._

"Okay," he says. "So if I train you here, then you know how to protect yourself when you need to. You know how to aim, and you don't panic when you pull the trigger. That's all that matters to me, Doc."

Angela huffs at him under her breath, but she turns her eyes back down the length of the range. The gun still feels heavy in her hand, needlessly blocky, all-together foreign. Commander Reyes slides a hand around the small of her back, almost thoughtlessly, his thumb running firmly along the waistband of her trousers.

"No one here is heartless. No one here looks down the sight and relishes it," he says. "Think about it."

Instead, she thinks about a time she'd filleted open a man to find the source of the bleed, even after the bullet itself had been removed. Six clamps, several sutures and a martyred kidney later, she'd finally stemmed the bleed just to lose him anyway. Sometimes the body just doesn't hold up, least of all with a seven percent chance of survival.

She looks down the sight and loathes it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

To Angela's relief, there is no actual shooting today. There is, however, an hour or more on the _respect_ owed to a weapon. Respect, she thinks, that operates exclusively as a vehicle to protect people from them, the same way you respect wild animals by giving them a wide berth, or respect fire by not sticking your hands in it. The gun's mere existence considering the respect afforded it is dedicating to avoiding the use of it. 

She'll respect it if she has to.

So Angela learns to identify types of pulse weapons, as well as projectile guns. Ammunition is easier, as she already has a vague idea of caliber and this and that from examining cavitations in the victims of their violence. He drills into her with jacketed rounds and hollowpoints and frangible rounds and stopping power, and she nods her way through it knowing it isn't going to make her a better medical research pioneer or healthcare provider. He tells her about trigger pull, about how her gun is designed for her lithe little hands, and how she'd probably never be able to pull his, not even with three fingers. (Excellent, well-practiced hand strength is a trait Angela could have surmised about Gabriel Reyes, anyway, give his hobbies.) She learns about holsters and how _no, it is never acceptable to stick it in your waistband no matter what they show in the movies,_ and what her options are for carrying for optimal draw time. ("It has a special holster, see? It recharges when put down, so you never pull it out without it being primed and ready with a full charge.") There's the conditions of carry. There's the basics of aiming and stances. And, most tedious, there's jamming, and field-stripping and detail-stripping and––

"How's it going?" Jack says.

Both Angela and the Commander look up from the pieces of her disassembled gun.

"Fine," Commander Reyes says. "What's going on?"

"The Toronto thing is getting ugly," Jack says. "Amari says we should have gone hours ago."

"I didn't ask what Amari said," Reyes says. "How many people are dead?"

Angela breathes in and holds it.

"At least ten casualties. Military tried to take out one of the barricades to get in, but it was too heavily guarded. They've fallen back now, but it's only a matter of time before they get desperate enough to go in again."

Angela looks between them again and her eyes settle on Reyes, who watches Jack like a hawk. For a moment they share in that peculiar telepathic conversation, the language of little looks and twitching mouths and furrowed brows, and then Reyes sighs.

"Yeah," he says. "Let's do this."

"I'll muster the troops," Jack says, and he flashes a brief smile at Angela –– "See you there?"

"Go, then," Reyes says, firmly, before Angela can answer. She doesn't have an answer. It's not like she has any sort of training for these operations, but she thinks to throw herself into the deep end and save some lives. Prove to herself whether this was all a terrible idea or not.

Jack excuses himself and Reyes looks at her and says, plainly: "Do you want to go?"

"If it's appropriate, yes," she says. "He said ten casualties."

"We're a four hour flight away," he says. (Four hours on an Orca jet, Angela imagines –– Overwatch crafts don't slouch like passenger jets do.) "Half of them might be dead well before you get there."

"And all of them could be dead if I don't, if their medical teams can't do enough," Angela replies, curtly. "If it's appropriate, I would like to lend my expertise."

For a beat, he doesn't reply, just watching her. There's something he isn't saying, and she sees it in the lines of his face, but he just nods.

"Let's go, then."

 

 

 


End file.
